Crazy for Loving You A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy - Pippa Grant Page 0,107
shredding into my chest and pecking away at my newly exposed heart.
Maybe I’ll never build skyscrapers in Hong Kong again. Maybe my line of spas for Carter International Properties will all close because the curtains are mango instead of cerulean.
Or whatever.
But I am not worthless.
And I won’t sit here and let her make me think I am for one more minute.
The Dame rises to her full height.
If she were truly an immortal highland vampire dragon, she’d spit fire out her nostrils and crack open her old lady shell to reveal her true form, an armor-plated flying cockroach.
“Daisy,” she whispers. “Oh my god, Daisy.”
My knees wobble, because she’s not breathing fire or using her powers of mind control to bend me double in pain.
Instead, she seems utterly gobsmacked.
In a lesser woman, I’d call her stricken.
“Go ahead,” I say, my voice quivering. “Disinherit me. I don’t care.”
She slowly shakes her head, eyes still wide. “You—Daisy—I could never actually—” She swallows, and all of her armor does crack.
But it’s not a beast who emerges.
It’s a broken, old, sad woman. “I’ve hurt you.”
“You’ve hurt a lot of people.”
“I—I merely wanted you to calm down. Not—”
I freeze. “You plagiarized Julienne’s will?”
“No! No. Of course not. That would be ridiculous. But when she told me she was naming you and Mr. Jaeger—”
“You knew Margot Roderick wanted to kill her?”
The Dame actually blanches. “She was so prone to exaggeration…and making enemies…”
I turn around and march toward the door. I don’t want to hear any more.
“I’ve always been so proud of you,” she says quietly behind me.
That should mean something. It should be everything I’ve worked my ass off for since I was twenty-one years old.
But what kind of a victory is it when I don’t want it anymore?
“Daisy. Stop,” she says. “You don’t have to quit.”
I ignore her.
I don’t remember what my employment agreement said. Probably something about indentured servitude for life in exchange for that twenty-five percent cut I asked for. Or something about losing a share in the company if I quit before a hundred and fifty years.
But I don’t care.
I have Bluewater. That’s mine. Mine, and Emily’s, and Luna’s, and Cam’s. She can’t take that from us.
I have my pool.
I have my yacht.
I have my mom.
I have my friends, who will undoubtedly tell me I’m a moron for sending West away, but I had to.
For his own good. For Remy’s own good.
I step back out into the sunshine, and I wait for the freedom to wash over me.
It doesn’t come.
Not washing, anyway.
But the tears do.
A month ago, I would’ve drowned myself in tequila and techno music at a club on the beach.
Today, I just want to go home.
Tiana and Alessandro surround me with a huge hug.
“I love you guys,” I whisper.
“We know. And we love you too.”
And that’s all it takes to finally break me.
Just a little bit of love.
This love, I might deserve.
But West’s?
He can do so much better.
Forty-Two
Daisy
Four days after the Weekend of Horror, as I’m officially calling it, I’m camped out in my pool house, contemplating not much of anything at all, because I am slobber-faced drunk.
I could go fry in the sun on a float in my pool, but I don’t want to.
I want to lay here.
On the cool tile floor.
With my boobs squished under me and a glass of something pink and beautiful just out of reach, even with the straw teasing me mere inches away.
I’m trying to extend my lips to reach it when the door slides open and the most fabulous pair of shoes ever stop just behind the glass.
Those fabulous shoes are followed by another pair of fabulous shoes, and one set of adorable bare feet.
“Oh, honey,” a soft voice says.
“I told you we should’ve come yesterday.”
“Her mom said she was fine.”
“Her mom was mistaken. Or possibly in denial. Did you see how puffy her eyes were? She’s just as upset as Daisy is. Maybe more so.”
“Oga aye,” I sigh against the floor.
I have no idea what it means, but it’s the sounds my mouth wants to make.
“Should we take her to the gym?”
“I don’t think she can walk on those shoes, much less work out in them today.”
“Maybe dunk her in the pool?”
“Jude’s just outside. If she starts to drown, he’ll leap in after her.”
“No pool,” I say. “Sun bad. Water bad. Want tequila.”
Emily’s face swims into view as she squats in front of me. She’s so pretty. I want to be pretty like Emily. “You need an intervention.”